Paul Pouvreau – ENSP teacher
Archi comble
The project titled Archi comble (Jam-packed) proposes to set up a visual dialogue between the architecture of the city – the diversity of its buildings – and that of an image block made up of photographs also representing architectural and sculptural forms. The only difference is that the photographs present prototypes of constructions made from used packaging. For a dialogue of this kind to take the form of a broader and more concrete conversation within the city, the black and white and colour photographs will be disseminated on advertising billboards and lollipops. The use of advertising supports is here motivated by an ironic principle, which is similar to and can be understood visually as a reversal effect. Precisely insofar that this packaging, arranged and photographed like architecture, is found where the products are usually vaunted, which is to say on advertising panels. This project attempts to reveal an exchange of processes somewhat condensed here into image and situation, between photography, advertising and the city. It is a question of checking off the relations of economic production and communication between these three territories in urban spaces. But also of revealing the major place that the city now grants to images as an integral part of its architecture, with the singular modifications that the former constantly brings to the latter’s configuration.
Paul Pouvreau
Born in 1956 at Aulnay-sous-Bois. Lives in Paris and works between Paris and Arles. Paul Pouvreau studied at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Bourges (DNSEP Arts), while simultaneously studying art history at the Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1. In 1982, he contributed to Cahiers du Cinéma’s ‘photography’ column. Since 2010, he has been part of the staff at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles. Prior to this, he taught photography at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts du Mans, starting in 1986. He developed artistic projects in which photography takes an increasingly important but not exclusive place, both as a means of representation and as a tool for reflection upon the interference of visual signs in our everyday lives and the modifications that the former have on our relationship with reality. He has also participated in several exhibitions in France and abroad, where his work features in various private and public collections.
Archi Comble, Paul Pouvreau, 2012, Public commission of the Culture and Communication Ministry – Centre National des Arts Plastiques.
